Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish published philosophy, poetry, plays, and one of the first works of science fiction under her own name when women were expected to publish nothing at all. Against the mechanical philosophy of Descartes and Hobbes, she argued that matter is not dead stuff pushed about from outside but is itself alive, self-moving, and knowing — that nature is a single thinking body, rational and sensitive through and through. In 1667 she became the first woman invited to attend a meeting of the Royal Society, an event that scandalized London. Eccentric and unstoppable, she made her own mind the subject of relentless inquiry.